The Strait of Hormuz, a 33-kilometer-wide chokepoint through which roughly a third of the world's seaborne oil passes, is effectively closed to normal commercial traffic. Iran has not blockaded the strait with a chain or a fleet. Instead, it has made the waterway ungovernable through a combination of kinetic strikes, mines, electronic warfare, and market fear -- creating a closure that is arguably harder to reverse than a conventional blockade. "I can think of no way to reopen and keep open Hormuz militarily and easily," Richard Allen Williams,…

Vessels posing as tankers that were sent for scrap years ago have appeared to pass through the Strait of Hormuz in recent days, in another example of how the Middle East war and the heavy signal interference in the region are affecting global shipping and energy flows.  The vessel Nabiin, which was in the Persian Gulf on Sunday, has now moved to the Gulf of Oman, meaning that it has passed the Strait of Hormuz outbound to the Gulf of Oman.  Yet, the Nabiin is a tanker that was sent to a scrapyard in Bangladesh five years ago, Bloomberg…

Indian retail fuel prices are stable despite a surge in the oil basket price to over $155 per barrel, the Hindustan Times reported today, citing energy industry executives. The Indian oil basket settled at $156.29 per barrel on March 19, overtaking Brent crude in a rare occurrence resulting from the supply disruption in the Middle East. That’s despite Iran’s statement that it would allow Indian tankers carrying oil for the subcontinent to pass through the Strait of Hormuz. As a result of the disruption, the Indian oil basket has surged…

Oil prices opened the week elevated but stable in early Asian trading on Monday, holding near multi-year highs after another weekend of escalating tensions between the United States and Iran. At the time of writing, WTI crude was trading at $98.61, up 0.39%, while Brent crude had inched down 0.24% to trade at $111.90. These muted price moves mask an increasingly uncertain environment, with markets bracing for a very volatile session. Late on Saturday, President Trump issued a stark ultimatum, warning that the United States would strike Iran’s…

Trump faces a simple but difficult choice: Iran’s enriched uranium still needs to be secured, and airstrikes haven’t accomplished that. The only clear way to control it would likely require U.S. troops on the ground—an option that risks widening the conflict and raising the stakes significantly. That uncertainty has been pouring over into global energy markets. Oil prices have pulled back from recent highs but remain elevated as the Middle East conflict shows no signs of abating. Europe remains largely non-committal towards using…

India is the world’s biggest case study for decarbonization, with a coal-reliant grid and 1.4 million people who depend on it. The world’s most populous country has an outsized impact on global climate goals, as well as outsized hurdles on the way to getting there. The scale of the challenge would be tough for any nation, but it’s particularly tricky for a country that’s rapidly developing and already feeling the negative consequences of a warming world. While the country is racing to add renewable energy capacity, oil and…

There's a quirk in physics that most engineers never have to worry about: the bigger a conventional battery gets, the longer it takes to charge. Obvious, really. More capacity, more time. It's one of those rules so intuitive you never bother to question it. Dr. James Quach questioned it. Quach, who leads quantum science research at CSIRO, Australia's national science agency, has spent years working on a class of energy storage devices that do something your phone battery would consider impossible.  Add more storage units to a quantum battery…

Since coming into office last January, United States President Donald Trump has repeatedly criticised renewable energy for hindering the country’s energy security and being a “green new scam”. Trump quickly introduced several executive orders aimed at ramping up fossil fuel output and restricting renewable energy production, thereby backtracking on much of the policy work of the Biden administration. However, a year into his leadership, it appears that not everyone is on the same page, as recent polls suggest that many U.S. voters…

Nuclear energy has been making a comeback recently as one of the low-carbon baseload generation options. This comeback is set to accelerate amid the Middle Eastern crisis and the oil and gas squeeze it is causing. The only problem is that nuclear capacity takes a while to build. “It was a strategic mistake for Europe to turn its back on a reliable, affordable source of low-emission power,” European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen admitted earlier this month at a nuclear energy summit in France. Von der Leyen herself had voted…

The first lease sale in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska in seven years became the most successful auction in the area ever, as oil majors bid on hundreds of tracts, signaling they haven’t given up on Alaska’s petroleum resources despite development and court challenges. This week’s oil and gas lease sale for the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska, one of five mandated in the next decade under the Trump Administration’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA), drew a record high of $163.7 million in high bids and resulted…